From Bad to Worse
by extraflxmey
Summary: Teaching archery? No biggie, right? Well, then. She swore to herself that if she ever got out of this alive, she would ask Nico di Angelo out on a date. One-shot. T for cursing.


**My number one proiority to make clear is: **

**_No Thalico._ I hate Thalico. Okay? So for all you shippers of Thalico out there, you might as well stop here. I'm just saying, because there's reference to it in the summary. (No duh.) **

**Disclaimer: Me no own Thalia Grace, her problems, her archery skills, or her rainbow pony sheep.**

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><p>"What if I said no?"<p>

"Then I'll throw you in a bag, douse you in gasoline, and drop-kick you off the Chrysler Building."

"You know, I really hate you sometimes..."

"Seriously. You know you love me."

"Says the girl who tried to brain me with a hammer when she was a seven-year-old."

Thalia Grace's fingers curled around the railing of the Big House. "Let me try this again."

Annabeth crossed her arms. "Make me change my mind. You've miserably failed for the past fifty-six times."

"Best case scenario: They all manage to make it out of psychiatric care. Worst case scenario: They all die."

Annabeth counted on her fingers. "That's the same excuse you used the twenty-third time. Can you at least be original?"

Thalia threw her hands up in the air in exasperation. "Annabeth Chase, you are so irksome at times it's a wonder how Jackson doesn't dump you."

Annabeth smirked. "You're just jealous."

Thalia's mouth promptly became unhinged. "Me? _Jealous?_ Annabeth, wake up and smell the ambrosia. I can't even have a conversation with him about rainbow pony sheep without arguing!"

"Rainbow pony sheep." Annabeth pondered this over, as if it were an extremely puzzling calculus question. "Interesting."

Thalia crossed her arms. "Can we go back to the subject?"

Annabeth shook her head. "Just do it. Please?"

Thalia stared at her as if she had asked her to deal drugs. "No."

"Thalia...being dumped in gasoline and lit on fire is not the most pleasant experience, I warn you."

Thalia cracked. "Fine. But we have to make a deal."

Annabeth instantly said, "I don't have any drachmas."

"Promise me that you will not give me another lecture on stellar parallax, and it's a deal."

It was true. Thalia had spent the last week trying to understand Annabeth's long essays on this so-called "stellar parallax". Thalia was all like:

What the hell?

Annabeth checked her watch. "Fine. It's a deal. Just teach them!"

Thalia groaned as Annabeth sprinted away, who was muttering, "Damn, I'm late!"

She swore to herself that if she ever got out of this alive, she would ask Nico di Angelo out on a date. In other words, she was definitely in some deep shit.

_SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE! _Aphrodite suddenly entered her mind. Thalia clasped her ears shut, but of course, the goddess of love had to be talking in her brain.

_I'll hold you to that!_

Well, fuck you, too.

Thalia sighed and stomped down the porch of the Big House, heading towards the archery fields.

Oh, she was going to get into a huge mess with this teaching archery business.

Thalia wondered what Annabeth taught the class about archery, given the large distraction that had been plopped straight in front of her—the superficial being known as Perseus Jackson.

Okay, so, maybe Percy wasn't the worst archer out there. (Well, actually, he probably was, but Thalia tried to not think about that.) But he was still down with the lowest of the low, and Thalia had no desire to have an arrow sticking out through her head like Frankenstein had his bolts.

Thalia didn't even realize where her feet were carrying her until she smacked straight into a target.

Well, wasn't that a wonderful first impression as a teacher. She would _definitely _never make it out alive.

One of the students, some fourth-year camper called Michael, raised his hand: "You're not Annabeth."

Well, genius, how'd you figure that out? Was it the hair? Was it the eyes? Was it the physical appearance in general?

Thalia could have said all that, but she didn't. "Um...point taken."

"I think that means that we actually have to do work," Michael continued glumly. Then, he perked up. "Hey, can we have a water balloon fight?"

Percy spoke up. "Where's Annabeth, Thals?"

Thalia rolled her eyes. "Out. You think I wanted to teach archery? Only the threat of being dumped in gasoline and set on fire prevented me from running for it."

"Then can we have a water balloon fight?" Michael made puppy dog eyes.

"No," Thalia snapped. "This is supposed to be archery, not 'let's-do-anything-we-want'."

Michael pouted. "But Annabeth lets us do that!"

Thalia facepalmed. Dear, holy gods, she had a lot of work to do.

"Shoot the target," Thalia said, wheeling around. "All of you."

While all of them struggled with which direction to put the arrow on the bowstring, Thalia shuffled through a couple of files.

_Michael Reich:_ F. Somehow manages to shoot himself on the foot.

Thalia remembered that day. It was total mayhem.

_Twang!_ Thalia's head jerked up as an arrow was released from the bow...

...Only to fall no less than six feet short of the target.

"Dammit, what does Annabeth teach you?" Thalia muttered under her breath.

"Oh," Michael said. "Actually, it isn't Annabeth that teaches us. She always has to leave on some errand or another, right? So, it was logical to let Percy teach us, since he's a senior camper."

The only thing that Thalia could think was:

_What the fuck?_

"Tell me you're kidding me. Please tell me you're kidding me."

"No, I'm not," Michael promptly said.

_Oh my fucking gods._

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><p>Thalia dragged herself out of the archery fields exactly two hours and fifty-four minutes later.<p>

It had taken three solid hours of begging, threatening, cajoling, yelling, and hitting to get every single one of those guys to manage to shoot the target.

_Damn you!_

Thalia bolted herself in the Zeus cabin. She only had about a second of peace until Aphrodite invaded her mind again.

Thalia's day went from bad to worse as she found herself knocking on the Hades cabin door.

She was going to be sick as Nico di Angelo opened it.

"Um...yeah?"

Thalia felt herself turn a nasty shade of green.

Oh, gods.


End file.
